The Chinese Way: China's Position in International Relations (review)

Reviews 263 giving to the practitioner easy ways to consult the oracle and to interpret its words, and offering to the Western specialist in Yijingstudies some new and lesser-known elements "avec l'espoir de susciter des discussions et des réflexions qui permettent d'approfondir la connaissance du Yi Kingdom l'apport se révèle de plus en plus intéressant maintenant que la planète est devenue un village" (in the hope ofarousing discussions and reflections that allow deepening ofknowledge about the Yijing, whose contribution is proving to be more and more ofinterest now that the planet has become a village). The book goes a long way toward meeting Wang's ambitions. Part ofthe global village still reads only English, however, and the planet would benefit if this excellent book were issued in an English translation. Kenneth Goodall An independent writer and editor with a special interest in theYijing and early China, Kenneth Goodall is also contributing editor 0/TECHNOS: Quarterly for Education and Technology. Wang Gungwu. The Chinese Way: China's Position in International Relations . Oslo: Scandinavian University Press, 1995. 89 pp. Paperback, isbn 82-00-22694-8. This is a small book on a very large subject. The Chinese Way comprises two lectures that historian Wang Gungwu, vice-chancellor ofthe University ofHong Kong, delivered in May 1995 at the Norwegian Nobel Institute's annual Spring Lecture series. Previous speakers in this series were Paul Kennedy, Richard Pipes, and Hélène Carrère d'Encausse. These names indicate a celebrity format featuring well-known scholars who are expected to deliver themselves of grand thoughts on grand topics such as the future of the world, the fall ofcommunism, and China's position in international relations, the latter being Wang Gungwu's assignment. Such lecture topics demand from the academic glitterati no less than from ordinary scholars an ability to formulate sweeping syntheses and bring fresh insights to familiar topics. The results of such efforts run the gamut from the scintillating© 1998 by University tQ ^ soporigc Tne chínese Waynavigates the main channelbetween these two banks, providing an overview ofChina's foreign relations that will be ofinterest mainly to those who have little or no prior acquaintance with the subject. ofHawai'i Press 264 China Review International: Vol. 5, No. 1, Spring 1998 After a useful deconstruction of the terms "China" and "Greater China," the latter a concept he rejects as smacking of Chinese expansionism, Wang focuses exclusively on the PRC in his discussion of die Chinese economy, politics, and culture. Although he recognizes Taiwan as part ofChina, he barely mentions the economic and political transformation of that land that has made it a much more attractive and plausible model for mainland China's future development than the PRC is for Taiwan. Wang devotes his first lecture to a consideration of the socialist market economy that emerged in China during the era of Deng Xiaoping. His discussion is marred by a literalism that apparently takes at face value the official rhetoric about socialism with Chinese characteristics, and ponders the improbable question ofwheflier—and if so, how—China's recent economic success can serve as a model for other developing economies. The false supposition he entertains is that the PRC has pioneered some new developmental patii rather than belatedly embracing the familiar export-led growth model that smaller Asian states, including Taiwan, South Korea, Singapore, Hong Kong, and Thailand, have followed . In the debate over the relationship between development and democracy, Wang suggests that Beijing has chosen wisely in giving priority to the former inasmuch as democracy is not a precondition for development. He ignores the proposition that democracy is a political choice that comes about through struggle as the cases of Taiwan and South Korea clearly show. It is not a mere by-product of development, and its raison d'être lies in the optimization ofvalues other than economic growth. Wang endorses the authoritarian modernizers who defer democracy to a distant tomorrow in the name of stability and prosperity. At this point, he asks, "Why could not Taiwan's form of capitalism and the PRC's form of socialism be brought together ... to promote China's international...